Global hydrobelts: A new method to define the world’s river basins

Global water assessments are generally performed on the basis of countries, political regions, or continents. However, these units cannot accurately perform this task because they:

(i) mask or minimize the great disparity of water resources within continents and large countries (e.g. USA, Russia, Brazil, China, Australia),
(ii) do not support integrated analysis of water-related issues at the river basin level, which is generally considered to be the optimum scale1,2, and,
(iii) are ill-suited for research into the response of river basins to current Global Change (including climate change and other human-induced environmental changes)3.

On the other hand, considering individual river basins at the global scale is of limited practical use because there are approximately 8,000 basins in total4,5. Selecting the fifty greatest basins exceeding 500,000 km2 would only account for half of the continental area. An approach to assessments is therefore needed that combines the level of detail found at the basin scale with a global level of coverage. The answer is river basin aggregation.

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Taxonomy

• Flood Management
• Transboundary Water Resources Management